Judge Pauses Trump Demand for Student Race Data in 17 States

The Trump administration had said it would collect data from colleges to ensure compliance with a Supreme Court ruling ending affirmative action in admissions. A federal judge ruled on Friday that the Trump administration could not demand detailed student admissions data from public colleges in the 17 states that are suing over the demand, pending a further decision in the case. The ruling, issued by Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV of the Federal District Court in Boston, extends an earlier order that temporarily blocked the Education Department from enforcing a deadline for the colleges to provide student application data on race, gender, test scores and other information from the past seven years. The initial temporary restraining order had applied to all colleges nationwide, but the judge limited a later order to public schools in the 17 mostly left-leaning states that sued the Education Department last month. The coalition of Democratic state attorneys general suing the administration said the policy was a rushed attempt to politicize the National Center for Education Statistics, a nonpartisan agency, by using it to crack down on admission policies promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. The states described the policy as "error-ridden and confusing" and argued that compliance could jeopardize the accuracy of the requested data. "This administration's crusade against D.E.I. is dangerous," Letitia James, New York's attorney general, said in a statement commending the ruling on Friday. "Students should not have to live in fear that their personal data will be handed over to the federal government, just as schools should not have to scramble to produce years of sensitive information to satisfy an arbitrary and unlawful demand." The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. Linda McMahon, the education secretary, has previously said that the policy, which was ordered by President Trump in August, was a way to ensure that colleges were not considering race in admissions after a landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2023 effectively outlawed race-conscious affirmative action. The Supreme Court's ruling did allow colleges to take race into account in some instances, and many universities said after the decision that they remained committed to diversity. The president's announcement of the policy raised concerns over colleges using what it called "racial proxies" to look for minority students, as schools turned to taking closer looks at socioeconomic factors to admit diverse classes of students. In a separate ruling on Tuesday, the judge also temporarily blocked the Education Department from demanding student admissions data from member colleges of two associations -- the Association of American Universities and the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts -- until April 14. The associations have filed motions to be join the lawsuit. Together, they represent more than 100 public and private universities and colleges.